In the previous posts of this series, I have simply been describing the ideas R. R. Reno lays out in his book The Return of the Strong Gods, attempting to put the case in terms I think Reno himself would agree accurately represents his ideas. At this stage, I’ll be adding my own thoughts to the matter, starting with what I see as good about Reno’s book and his arguments.
Reno’s argument centers on a metaphorical concept of gods – gods than can be strong or weak, unifying or divisive, benevolent or dark. I appreciate the stylistic flourish to this approach – obviously he does not believe that “nationalism” or “patriotism” or “identity” are actual deities, but casting them in a rhetorical style that describes them as such does seem to be appropriate. These kinds of ideas are frequently discussed with a sort of quasi-religious reverence. It’s not for nothing that the quip “politics is the religion of modernity” exists.
An interesting idea proposed by Guido Pincione and Fernando Teson for evaluating a thinker is how well they perform what Pincione and Teson call the Display Test. In their (excellent) book Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk, Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke describe it this way:
Virtually every policy proposal would have downsides – perhaps even significant ones – if implemented. If a politician is honest about those downsides and supports the policy anyway, this is good evidence that she supports the policy because she thinks it will secure overall good outcomes. On the other hand, if a politician obscures or refuses to acknowledge the negatives of her proposal, Pincione and Teson suggest she is either ignorant or dishonest. She’s ignorant if she’s not aware of the downsides. She’s dishonest if she’s aware of the downsides but conceals them for rhetorical advantage. As Pincione and Teson put it, she’s a “posturer.”
By this measure, Reno scores exceptionally well. While Reno calls for the return of the strong gods, he takes multiple detours in his argument to stress just how dangerous strong gods can be, and he freely admits that much of the devastation that has been wrought on civilization has been done in the service of strong gods. Describing the carnage of the first half of the 20th century, Reno says,
The streets rang with declarations: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the Triumph of the Will, Blood and Soil. In those years, fierce gods trampled the benign managerial habits of commerce and the liberal norms of free consent and democratic deliberation. Strong and dark gods stormed through Europe, eventually setting aflame most of the world and bringing death to millions.
Respectably, Reno does not take the path taken by so many socialists who (falsely) declare “but that wasn’t real socialism!” after yet another attempt at socialism predictably collapses into disaster. Reno doesn’t say the ideas that motivated these disasters weren’t real strong gods. He repeatedly bends over backwards to emphasize that “Men do horrible things in the service of strong gods. Traditional societies justify radical inequalities, calling them expressions of sacred hierarchies. They demand terrible sacrifices for collective aims perfumed with transcendent claims. Modern societies have inflicted unspeakable brutalities in the service of utopian ideologies that claim the supreme sanction of History.” Say what you want about Reno’s worldview, but you can’t accuse him of minimizing or overlooking the risks and downsides of what he advocates.
But while Reno freely admits how dangerous strong gods can be, he believes that human society will always come back to them in one form or another. In this, his thought demonstrates what Michael Freeden, in his book Ideologies and Political Theory, identified as a signature feature of conservative thinking. Conservatives, Freeden says, argue that human societies are limited or structured by “extra-human” forces – forces we cannot alter, and that put limits on what can be achieved. The reign of strong gods over a society is such an extra-human force in Reno’s thinking – one that is driven by fundamental facts of human nature that cannot be changed. All thinking about social order must take place within the constraints of this unalterable fact.
As a result of his own performance of the Display Test, Reno treats those who wished to banish the strong gods with a great deal of respect and sympathy, and he frequently makes an effort to point to areas where their arguments were correct, or their ideas proved beneficial when put into practice. He also avoids the all-too-common trend of acting as though those on the other side of the argument have nothing of value to say:
Our leadership class is not wrong to be nervous about what Trump and other populists represent. We have a great deal to lose. An open society can be wealthy and moderate. Technocratic rationality of the sort encouraged by Popper can lead to well-considered policies. Hayek and Friedman were correct. The decentered play of self-interest in the marketplace can generate wealth and give us elbow room to make up our own minds about how to live.
Reno argues that much of what classical liberals value is good and useful and can be beneficial toward maintaining and improving social order. His objection isn’t that the basic values of the open society are wrong, only that they are incomplete and can’t serve as ends in themselves:
But the open society alone fails to meet our basic human need for a home. True solidarity is not close-minded complacency. It is an active loyalty that aspires to be faithful to a shared love…Without loyalty and the solidarity it breeds we become disquieted, even amidst our pleasures, riches, and relative comity.
Reno also acknowledges the value of liberalism and that strong gods can be liberal gods too. Liberalism guided by a shared commitment to strong gods is beneficial:
They are called “liberal” because they seek to identify a basis for civic loyalty in self-interest…These liberal theories suggest a useful test of the strong gods of public life: Are they humanizing or dehumanizing? Do they lay waste or bring flourishing? Shared loves that abandon individuals to the rapacious, dominating, bloodthirsty impulses of others are surely malevolent, as are the strong gods that imprison on a whim, employ thought police, and confiscate property.
These liberal theories are only me-centered in part. The liberal democratic ethos does not want freedom only in the Roman sense of collective freedom from domination and for self-government. It also values a public spirit of voluntariness: this is my country not merely because I was born here, for if I could, I would actively choose it. The common good of widespread consent to our way of life affects civic affairs in many ways. It is obviously manifest in an all-volunteer military. But in more subtle ways the atmosphere of consent – I’m here because I want to be here! – fuses private interest with public spiritedness. It allows our commercial republic to be both an arena for the pursuit of wealth and self-interest and a genuine republic, a commonwealth we care about for its own sake and which we are willing to sustain, defend, and improve, even at the cost of personal sacrifice.
I also think the distinction between transcendent ideas that unite and those that divide is a true and useful one. And I believe Reno is correct that in the last few generations, the latter have been driving out the former. One strong god that seems (to me, anyway) to have been diminished can still be found on the currency of the United States – E pluribus unum, which translates from Latin to “out of many, one.” The idea behind this was that the citizens of America may have family histories that trace back to numerous nations across the world, but nonetheless, in America one is American regardless of that background. Identity politics inverts this idea, fracturing one into many. This has the effect of Balkanizing a citizenry into opposing identities that see each other as rival special interest groups against whom they must compete. This concern, incidentally, was shared by Teddy Roosevelt, who said,
The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of it continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving a separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic.
Modern identity politics seems to take things a step further than even this. Roosevelt was worried about a split along one axis – national identity. But modern identity politics has created far more axes upon which people’s “identity” can be divided, an each additional axis compounds the degree to which social unity can be splintered.
But one mustn’t overstate things – E pluribus unum isn’t totally extinct. When I was in the Marines, I met a number of people who had enlisted in the Marine Corps despite not being American citizens. Most of those I knew did eventually gain citizenship – and they all, without fail, seemed very dedicated to the strong god of E pluribus unum. They would react very poorly if you referred to them as Canadian-Americans or Bolivian-Americans or Brazilian-Americans – if you suggested to them they were anything other than just American, full stop, they took it as an insult. They came to America because they wanted to be Americans. They had a negative visceral reaction to the idea of hyphenated identity that far exceeded even what you’d hear from a small town conservative radio talk show host.
I think that in the big picture, and in broad strokes, there is a lot of truth to the framing Reno describes. And temperamentally, I’ve always enjoyed reading the ideas of people who speak in terms of big, bold ideas. But these big picture narratives often have a habit of cracking when you drill down and look into the finer details, and Reno’s narrative is no exception. In my next posts I’ll be describing some important points I think Reno gets wrong.
READER COMMENTS
Grant Gould
Mar 5 2025 at 11:36am
It seems to me from your your description (admittedly I have not read the book) that Reno commits the fundamental sin of all those who want to order the political universe on the basis of an alleged universal property of human nature: He doesn’t explain what he means to do with those who do not share that property (and who are therefore presumably possessed of an impaired or absent humanity).
Generally speaking religions are not very kind to atheists; the believers in the strong gods have no better track record than others, and occasionally worse. Precisely where Reno means to put those people who do not feel the “universal” call of nationality or who don’t “naturally” deduce identity to be morally normative seems menacingly unclear. But since one of the real trends of recent politics is that more young people are skeptical of nationality’s particularist normative claims, clarity seems important.
But perhaps this is clarified in the book; it’s on my queue after Kevin Vallier’s latest.
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 7 2025 at 7:31am
Hello Grant –
Good question! The answer is that Reno doesn’t talk much about “those who do not share that property,” and he does indeed speak as though it was universal, such as when he says:
But, of course, this is not truly universal. Similarly, when Adam Smith opens his Theory of Moral Sentiments, he begins with this line:
Smith, too, talks as though this is universally true of all people, but of course, it’s not. There are some rare people for whom this is not true. But it’s near enough to universal to be a solid basis for Smith to work with when building his social philosophy.
But, let me hazard a guess as what I think Reno would say, if forced to confront the fact that there are some people who do not see their private interests as part of a larger whole, who feel no call to use their freedom to serve the body politic with intelligence and loyalty, and who find, contra Aristotle, no desire in themselves for transcendence and see nothing intrinsically fulfilling in attaining it.
I suspect Reno would say such people are rare, but nothing special needs to be done “about” them, per se. The problem, as Reno sees it, is that 98% of people do have this as a deep need, and the current social climate leaves this need perpetually unfulfilled, while 2% of people are left unaffected. A revival of the kinds of ideas Reno advocates would allow that 98% of people to attain the fulfillment they desire without turning to debasing dark gods, while the remaining 2% of people can continue to go on unaffected. If all of Reno’s talk about the need for transcendent vistas and social unity and mutual loyalty and all the rest leaves one completely cold, nothing in what he writes suggests anything needs to be done about that person. They can freely live in a bubble, if they so choose. But the vast majority of people don’t want to live that way, and a civic society that fulfills the needs of that vast majority is critically important.
Again, that’s just my sense of what Reno would say, based upon his writing in general. But, lacking mind-reading abilities, I’m not sure, and I could be wrong.
Roger McKinney
Mar 5 2025 at 12:04pm
“They are called “liberal” because they seek to identify a basis for civic loyalty in self-interest…”
This is a dishonest depiction of classical liberalism. Catholics have for centuries claimed to have a third way between capitalism and socialism that is superior to both. But they always fight their straw man version of capitalism or liberalism.
Liberalism never identifies a basis for civic loyalty. Liberals never championed a common good for humanity. They never chose a religion or told people what the meaning of life is. They never promoted any morality beyond Thou shalt not steal and Thou shalt not murder. Catholics hate that and think any system of government should do all those things.
Liberals merely set limits on what the state could do and left people free to decide for themselves all those issues.
And Reno overcomplicates the problem. The 20th century was a disaster because socialists in the forms of fascism and communism wanted to save humanity. They believed people are born good but oppression makes them evil. Private property was the greatest evil. By eliminating it, socialists thought they could perfect humanity.
Liberalism came from the Christian doctrine of original sin that says people are born with a strong tendency to evil that only Christ can change. Government is powerless to change human nature. And because all people have an evil streak, we need to limit the damage evil people can do with government power.
CS Lewis wrote that an tyrant will occasionally relent from his evil because of fatigue. But a do gooder never regents and never tires of his tyranny.
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 7 2025 at 8:08am
Hello Roger –
If Reno’s description of classical liberalism is “dishonest,” I can only say it’s also a widespread dishonesty, and one widely promoted by many people who themselves identify as classical liberals. Similarly, you suggest that the true definition of classical liberalism is devoid of anything to do with civic loyalty, has no conception of a common good for humanity, and has no moral substance to offer beyond not killing and stealing. This, too, is a rather esoteric definition of classical liberalism, at least among writers and philosophers who have identified, or have traditionally been identified, as classical liberals.
On the other hand, I’m not a fan of descending into arguing about definition – I find going round after round of disputing definitions to be tedious and uninteresting, at best. But more interesting to me is this. I spent a couple of days at a Liberty Fund event, talking with a variety of academics and writers who would all identify as classical liberals. And in the various discussions, one thing that came up is that what you seem to be proposing as being what classical liberalism “really means” was widely agreed upon to itself be a straw man representation of classical liberalism. More interestingly, a significant concern that was expressed by many was how your definition of “liberalism” is itself promoted with glee by NatCons as being the “true” definition of liberalism, because it turns out that’s a great way of recruiting people to being NatCons. By convincing people liberalism has no moral substance to it beyond the bare minimum of not killing and stealing, and that it contains nothing in itself that brings people together, people who hear that are very prone to abandon liberalism in favor of nationalist conservatism.
So if you want to draw a line in the sand and insist that your definition of liberalism is the One True Objectively Correct Definition, that’s of course your call to make. But I would also suggest that’s very much a “be careful what you wish for, because you just might get it” kind of moment. A lot of NatCons out there will be rooting for you to succeed, because you’ll be greatly assisting their recruitment efforts.
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 7 2025 at 10:44am
Also, I just remembered with some amusement when I did a similar long form review of Yoram Hazony’s book on conservatism. One of Hazony’s arguments against liberalism and in favor of conservatism was that liberalism lacked any positive moral prescriptions above not killing or stealing, gave no advice on how to live, and had nothing useful to contribute to civic unity etc. Liberals could choose to incorporate such things into their life if they so chose, said Hazony, but nothing in liberalism itself required any of that. This seems basically the same as how you’re defining liberalism. And at the time, there was overwhelming pushback from commenters that Hazony was presenting a straw man version of liberalism, and that nobody who advocated for liberalism believes or argues that liberalism entails no moral obligations above “no murder or theft of property”, etc. Perhaps you would argue that everyone else in that conversation, too, is just defining liberalism the wrong way and you alone have the correct definition. But it certainly seems to be the dominant use of the term, including by those who identify as classical liberals.
Roger McKinney
Mar 7 2025 at 12:05pm
Interesting! I thought my view of classical liberalism was the standard. Beyond prohibiting theft, murder and kidnapping, what would these people claim are the moral imperitives of classical liberalism?
Maybe the problem is that classical liberalism doesn’t use the state to punish those who don’t hold to the ideals of others. Classical liberals tended to be Christians, but didn’t advocate criminalizing non-Christians. They held to the importance of families without criminalizing singleness.
Cass and NatCons want the state to subsidize their preferred morality and are foolish enough to think that the state can perfect people through legislation.
Roger McKinney
Mar 7 2025 at 12:13pm
PS. I have always seen classical liberalism as a system of government, not a philosophy. So, the only things the state can criminalize are theft, murder and kidnapping.
The theologians at the University of Salamanca who distilled the principles of classical liberalism limited the state to punishing criminals and national defense and the only crimes were theft, murder and kidnapping. That didn’t mean that was their only morality. They insisted on giving to the poor and other Christian morality. They just didn’t see the state enforcing any of them.
nobody.really
Mar 5 2025 at 4:20pm
Thus, the point is NOT that Reno unreservedly praises strong gods. The point is, according to Reno, that humans ultimately cannot resist them. In fiction, recall Lord of the Flies, or The Music Man, or Camelot: An ordered, rational-ish society dissolves—or perhaps unites?—as a perceived threat gets people to band together in visceral tribalism.
Surely every student of libertarianism has had this thought at one time or another? The easiest way to sell libertarianism is as a vehicle for rallying people against the common enemy: Government! But if that’s the basis upon which you build your campaign, it then becomes difficult to acknowledge that government actually serves some useful functions. Once you acknowledge this, then the campaign for libertarianism loses its tribal, band-together-against-evil appeal. Recall the lessons learned by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY):
I surmise, though I don’t know, that Reno argues that we should embrace of Christianity as the least bad strong god. But that would invite the question, WHICH Christianity? There is a version of Christianity that embraces pluralism and tolerance (a/k/a mainline Protestantism). But it has been sidelined by a version of Christianity that seems entirely based in tribalism.
In the Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis has the true religion of Aslan assaulted by various forces, including disbelief and rival faiths. But the climactic challenge—the one that triggers the end of the world—comes from corrupt leaders within Narnia manipulating people into embracing a bastardized version of the Aslan religion, and condemning those who resist as being anti-religious. The true faith of Aslan is restored only through divine intervention.
Alas, it appears that the bastardized version of Christianity is the true strong god.
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 7 2025 at 9:19am
Yes, that’s about right. Also, I love that quote from Massie. I hadn’t heard it before, but it definitely made me chuckle, and it also seems right as far as I can tell.
This is a bit of a yes and no. Strictly speaking, Reno seems to argue that a widespread return to religious observance, and a reverence for religious traditions shorn of political attachments, is a necessary and stabilizing strong god. But he still does throw his hat in a bit toward a specific strain, namely, Catholicism:
Of note, a recently released book by Jonathan Rauch, a lifelong atheist, seems to make a similar line of argument about the importance of religious institutions as a stabilizing force in society, and necessary as a counterbalance against populist nationalism run amok. I say “seems to” because I haven’t yet read the book – that’s just what I’ve gleaned from the description, so I may be wrong. But I’m interested enough in the argument to add the book to my “to-read” list – alas, a list that grows far faster than my reading speed! But I may move this one closer to the front of the line.
nobody.really
Mar 5 2025 at 5:17pm
1: Are we really talking about “from many, one”? Or are we simply talking about rival forms of tribalism?
Roosevelt (and perhaps Kevin Corcoran?) seem to advocate not merely people uniting under an “American” banner, but also discarding their banners of “German,” “Irish,” “English,” etc. This isn’t transcending nationalism; it’s just substituting one nationalism for another. If you advocated TRUE unity, you’d be singing John Lennon’s “Imagine,” in which he ponders a world without any tribal affiliations, including national and religious ones. According to Lennon (and perhaps St. Paul?), “Americanism” is not something to celebrate, but rather is just one more arbitrary category to discard.
Perhaps we should all unite under the “Human” banner. But why just humans? Why not all sentient creatures?
But why just the sentient ones? Why not all living things?
But why just living? Why not celebrate all nature on earth, as various pantheistic religions do?
But why just Earth?
I could imagine arguments in favor of each of these things. And I could imagine Reno standing with crossed arms and cocked eyebrows, asking, “Do any of these things look like strong gods to you? If Russia invaded tomorrow, would you be able to rally your neighbors by appealing to any of these ideas? If not, then all these philosophical discussions are moot. Build your house upon the bedrock, and your society upon the foundation of strong gods—or you build at your peril.”
2: On the other hand, what about the category “African-American”? Could the Civil Rights Movement have existed without it? Indeed, would it be possible to implement laws prohibiting undue discrimination without acknowledging the existence of distinguishing qualities such as race that prompt people to discriminate unduly?
It’s easy enough to reject the desires of members of subordinated groups to gain recognition if you don’t happen to be a member of those groups. Why should the military bother itself with providing feminine hygiene products to soldiers? After all, most soldiers don’t need them—and those soldiers who insist on identifying as “female Americans” are just causing needless divisions within the ranks….
In short, I acknowledge the benefits of unifying dynamics (strong gods). And I acknowledge the benefits of disaggregating dynamics, too.
Kevin Corcoran
Mar 7 2025 at 9:36am
Reno, too, would sign off on this statement, as made. His argument isn’t that it’s all one and none of the other. His argument isn’t that a healthy society requires both, and that the scales have been far too heavily weighted on one against the other, and that a realignment is needed.
Towards the end of his book, Reno tells the following story that I think captures how he thinks about these things:
Reno was clearly struck by the fact that this man’s reaction to that film was “how could we have done that to them?” rather than “how could you have done that to us?” He was so committed to seeing himself and his fellow Americans as a single, unified, mutually loyal whole, that he was free of any feeling of personal antagonism or aggrievement, and instead only felt sadness and heartbreak, over the wrongs of the past. I think Reno would argue that we need more of that kind of unity.
Roger McKinney
Mar 7 2025 at 12:25pm
Reno is stuck on Aristotle as are most Catholic intellectuals, as if we havent learned anything new on 2500 years. Aristotle thought the state could improve morality through various means. He didn’t have the Christian doctrine of original sin.
Classical liberalism has the Christian doctrine of original sin as its foundation, meaning the state canbdo nothing to improve morality. It can only punish criminals. The church has the sole responsibility of improving morality and if that doesn’t work nothing can be done. The state shouldn’t try to do the church’s job anymore than the church should be chasing and punishing criminals.
I agree with Reno that his strong gods of family and religion are good, but the state needs to stay out of promoting those.
NatCons are closer to fascism than to classical liberalis. Fascists promoted similar family values and a form of religion, though not Christian. They used the power of the state to promote them. And economically, NatCons want the state to direct the economy, much as fascism did.
nobody.really
Mar 11 2025 at 7:32pm
…as illustrated by the Godfather films?
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